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Understanding 9/11In what is arguably his greatest book--written in 1979 and reissued here in trade paperback--America's most heroically ambitious writer follows the short, blighted career of Gary Gilmore, an intractably violent product of America's prisons who---after robbing two men and killing them in cold blood--insisted on dying for his crime
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Reviewer:
Vit Babenco
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September 27, 2024
Subject: The Hangdog's Dirge
Subject: The Hangdog's Dirge
I’m not a fan of criminal chronicles. And even such a scrupulous and voluminous analysis of the dire crime as The Executioner's Song didn’t really move me deeply.
All those thieves, robbers, rapists, murderers do their obnoxious crimes and when caught they declare that society is guilty in their crimes and cry for mercy… And they get mercy.
When the crime becomes a focus of the wide public attention this publicity begins to work against justice.
He was ready to argue there was no rational way you could justify the death penalty, except to admit it was absolute revenge. If that, he would say, was the foundation of the criminal justice system, then we had a pretty sick system.
All those thieves, robbers, rapists, murderers do their obnoxious crimes and when caught they declare that society is guilty in their crimes and cry for mercy… And they get mercy.
When the crime becomes a focus of the wide public attention this publicity begins to work against justice.
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